To Plow or Not to Plow

12/05/2005

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
Tom Stoppard

Sensitivities, frequently based on personal experiences, sometimes lead to invalid conclusions, preventing individuals from raising personal prejudices and assumptions to awareness. There can be a great deal of labor associated with plowing through this awareness. The www.understandingprejudice.org web site provides exercises and links to resources helpful in evaluating conscious and unconscious biases. “Research demonstrates that biases thought to be absent or extinguished remain as “mental residue” in most of us. Although individuals may be consciously committed to egalitarianism and work to behave without prejudice, they still may possess hidden negative prejudices or stereotypes. So even though we believe we see and treat people as equals, hidden biases may still influence our perceptions and actions” (see Dig Deeper www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/index.html).

I was reminded of the impact of assumptions, when my long-saved-up-for digital camera disappeared. In an effort to facilitate its re-appearance, a colleague made a plea to students, all of whom had completed diversity sensitivity seminars, for its return. Several students, unaware of my colleague's past experiences with poverty (and, therefore, careful planning around the message content), perceived the message delivery as targeting students of low SES, making the assumption that this resulted from my colleague's lack of experience with poverty. The episode alerted me that despite sensitivity sessions encouraging the “plowing through” of personal experiences and best laid plans meant to support students, messages may still be interpreted from the “mental residue” resulting from personal experience.

For further “plowing” visit www.understandingprejudice.org and take part in their Implicit Association Test.

Contributed by Valerie Rhomberg and Laurie McNelles

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